The Titan Pack and the Future of UnrealIn our latest editorial piece we look at how the recently-released UT3 Titan Pack brought more players to the community and brought UT3 back into the limelight. More >

BU points us to GoGamer's 48 Hour Madness page, where UT3 on the PC can be had for under nine of your American dollars. Alternatively you can snag the Xbox 360 version of the game with a 360 controller for just $30.

GOG.com, which stands for Good Old Games, has partnered with Game Hunters to give away 10 free codes that can be used towards any of the site's more than 130 DRM-free, downloadable PC games.

This includes classics such as Duke Nukem 3D, Ground Control, Fallout, Evil Genius, Pure Pinball, Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, and many more. All games have been tested to work on current hardware and include extra content such as digital manuals, developer interviews, concept art, soundtracks, and more.

All you need to do is send a private message to my profile page and the first 10 people to do so will get a code to use at GOG.com on any title.

Famed Unreal mapper Hourences has updated his personal site with details of new Unreal Engine 3 mapping tutorials, as well as the news of the birth of mini-Hourences :)

It has been a long long time since my last update. I have been much too busy with my projects and real life. Much has happened, much more will happen. First of all I actually became a dad! My girlfriend and I had a son, March 3, 2009, and his name is Jarne. He is almost four months now and everything is going good. By the age of 1 he will have made his first level :)

UIScenes: Creating a basic UIScene. Used to display text and images on the screen and anything else to do with the interface.
Cutscenes: A simple cutscene that makes use of two different cameras, triggers an event along the way, and fades in and out.

A joint press release by GamersGate and Epic Games reveals that the digital download platform has secured rights to publish the Unreal series online.

GamersGate and Epic Games, Inc. have signed an agreement to offer Epic's complete, multimillion-selling Unreal series of games for download through GamersGate, a premier digital distribution service for PC games. All titles covered under the agreement are now available to all GamersGate users at www.gamersgate.com.

Under the agreement, the Unreal catalog will be available through GamersGate for full purchase. The library includes Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor’s Choice Edition, Unreal Anthology (which includes the previous four titles) and Unreal Tournament 3 Black. Unreal Tournament 3 Black is the fully updated version of UT3 that includes the massive Titan Pack title update and bonus downloadable content.
“This arrangement will bring the timeless Unreal collection of games to a huge new market and also expand Epic’s player base and mod community,” said Jay Wilbur, vice president of Epic Games. “GamersGate will be offering the bestselling editions of each classic Unreal title as well as Unreal Tournament 3 Black, which includes the massive Titan Pack released earlier this year.”

“Epic Games and the Unreal franchise are two monumental icons in the gaming world and having the opportunity to work with both of them is a privilege,” said Theo Bergquist, CEO of GamersGate. “Our priority is to provide our customers with the best library of PC games there is and no library is complete without the Unreal franchise.”

To celebrate this agreement and the release of the Unreal catalog, GamersGate is offering all six Unreal titles for 15% off. Users can take advantage of these savings until the sale ends on June 28, 2009. For more information, or to purchase the Unreal games, please visit www.gamersgate.com.

Once a mod in its own right, competing in Epic's UT2004 mod contest, now Tripwire Interactive's Killing Floor is a retail game with its very own mapping contest...

Welcome to Tripwire Interactive’s “Killing Floor Grindhouse” Custom Map Making Competition with $20,000-worth of prizes. Tripwire are partnering with Nvidia and Logitech to bring you a truly spectacular mapping contest for the zombie-slaughtering co-op hit that is Killing Floor. The headline prize will be an awesome $10,000 for the Grand Prize winner.
The contest will run in two Waves. Wave 1 completes July 31, 2009, with a First Prize of $5,000 for the winner, while the runners-up will get prizes including Nvidia graphics cards and Logitech goodies. Wave 2 is the Big One, completing September 18, 2009. The Grand Prize will be $10,000. Yes, a full Ten Thousand Dollars for the winning entry! There will be more Nvidia graphics cards and Logitech goodies for runners-up in Wave 2.
The Application Form will be open nearer the closing date for each Wave, as you only need to submit your entries when they are ready and not every single time you create a new version (please!). Keep watching the Killing Floor website for news on when we will open the application forms. But start mapping. Now! There is only one way to win - and that is to create an awesome map. So get to it…

BeyondUnreal reports via a Midway Games press release that the troubled publisher is preparing to sell assets including intellectual properties and game studios across the world in order to raise cash.

Midway recently announced a "stalking horse" asset purchase agreement, which is expected to receive court approval, subject to higher or better bids, in a hearing on June 2, 2009. Following this hearing, there will be a period during which Midway, through its financial advisor, Lazard, will accept binding offers up to June 24th, 2009, to acquire some or all of the Company's assets. An auction will be held on June 29th to determine the bid or combination of bids that achieves the highest value, followed by a court hearing to approve the sale to the winning bidder or bidders on July 1st, and then a final closing. All bids must comply with the bid procedures order to be issued at the hearing on June 2, 2009.

The "stalking horse" asset purchase agreement includes a significant portion of Midway's assets, however not all of the assets were included in the agreement. The bidding process allows for interested parties to bid on sets of assets including those not in the agreement, and multiple bidders can be formed into a group whose bids in the aggregate constitute a greater value than the initial stalking horse bid. Successful bidders will be buying only Midway's assets, and will not assume nor be responsible for any of the company's debt or liabilities, including any secured or unsecured notes, credit facilities, or trade obligations.

Midway's considerable intellectual property assets span some of the most successful sectors in the video game industry. Midway is well known for fighting games, with its more than $1.5 billion franchise, Mortal Kombat, as well as the video game license for the fastest-growing wrestling league, Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling. Midway's development teams are known worldwide for their expertise in fighting game mechanics, motion-capture integration, and AAA production values.

Last week it emerged that Warner Bros. had made a $33 million bid for Midway, which declared bankruptcy in February and owes more than $280 million to its creditors.

Gamasutra has a new article examining the fall from grace of the troubled Midway Games, publisher of Epic's Unreal Tournament 3, amongst other titles.

Midway’s financials in the 1990s are striking. Annual revenues for Midway’s home video game business didn’t surpass those of its arcade business until fiscal year 1996, when it dawned on management to begin publishing home versions of its own coin-op games instead of farming out home gaming duties to Acclaim. In 1997, coin-op revenues hit $168.3 million, compared to home game revenues of $219.9 million. For Midway, it was a banner year for its arcade business.

Two short years later we would see Midway falter. In 1999, Midway managed to eke out an operating profit of $8.3 million, way down from 1998’s $65 million. Revenues tumbled $27.5 million from the prior year to $134 million. The age of decline had begun.

You can argue that on a fundamental basis, Midway is in the position it’s in today because it never really broke free of its admirable but stifling coin-op roots, and failed to become a true top-tier home console competitor.

Game companies are expanding and hiring. For instance, Epic Games, which has 110 employees in Cary, wants to hire 10 more.

And gaming jobs pay well. The average salary in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, was $73,600, according to Game Developer magazine.

No wonder then that Wayne Watkins, project manager for the economic development arm of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, has been attending game conferences around the country to talk up the area and pass out maps that pinpoint 30 Triangle video-game companies, which together employ 1,200 workers. The aim is to show that the area is a video game hub.

In an interview with Joystiq, Epic president Dr. Michael Capps has responded to earlier criticism of working conditions at Epic.

That said, do you guys have stats for the number, average number of hours worked, let's say on a project, on a single project, for an Epic employee?

I don't think we track average stats. We require 40 hours a week here. We've got three rules on any given day: You have to work eight hours in the office. You have to be here between 1:30pm and 5pm since that's when we have all our meetings. Some folks crawl in at 1:15 and some folks come in at 7 am and are out by 5. Kind of depends on personality. And then you have to be out of here by 2am. We don't let people work too late because it starts causing problems where they'll roll their hours over to the next day, that sort of thing. Honestly, the rule I have the most trouble here with these guys is kicking them out at 2. That's the one that pisses folks off. It's not the 8 hours a day, it's the 2am and I'm still working and I'm on a "I've got a bug by the tail and I want to finish it." And we'll have someone going around banging on doors, kicking everybody out because they need to go home. During crunch time we definitely pick it up. I don't think we have stats but I know we were on 12 hour days, five days a week for Gears 2 for, I don't know, maybe six weeks. Something like that.

Read on here, lots more info on why Epic is a super awesome place to work.

GamingHeaven fired up a review of the recently released free Titan Pack expansion for UT3.

The Titan Pack is a great purchase, because it adds two new game modes and a ton of maps as well as a fantastic mutator system. The Titan pack also expands the replayability of the game and injects new blood into a shooter that you might not have played for quite a few months. When you consider that this is entirely free, then why are you still sitting here reading this? Join in the masses online!

Level designer Paul Mader dropped us a line to tell us about the latest collection of Unreal Engine 3 based art on his blog.

Hi this is a little project I am working on for some time now. I work on it when ever I have some time. I made it using the retail version of Unreal Tournament 3 using just self created content. Sofar I just show some high res screenshots I toke within the Unreal Engine. I am planning on making a video capture to show a little more. Critics and comments are very welcome.

Want to score yourself a free copy of Unreal Tournament 3 Black? BeyondUnreal is giving you the chance to do just that by showing off your best screenshot from an earlier Unreal game.

Epic Games and BeyondUnreal are all set to give away five more Unreal Tournament 3 Black Steam keys and all you need to do to win is post your best Unreal/Tournament screenshot.

Use any version of Unreal or Unreal Tournament to grab a screenie - it can be funny, amazing, artistic, whatever - and post it in the comments thread. Upload it through your forum account or to your own web space. Just make sure the image is visible in your post. We don't want to weed through pages of links please!

We'd like to request that if you already have a copy of Unreal Tournament 3 that you do not enter... or at least make it clear in your post that you are not contributing a picture to win. We'll pick the best five and send a Private Message to the forum account of the winners.